Edward swung the suit-cases and went on in that light bitter voice.

“We now skip four and a half years. I have been dead for about three of them-quite credibly and circumstantially dead. Uncle James has naturally made a new will. Even if I haven’t been formally disinherited, you don’t leave the family possessions to a corpse. So Edward being dead, and James being dead, dear Uncle Arnold scoops the lot. That’s the set-up. Didn’t Emmeline tell you about it?”

Susan shook her head.

“I don’t think so. There was a squiggle down in the corner of the last page which I couldn’t quite read, but I thought it was only some more about one of the kittens which had turned out quite unexpectedly good so she had changed its name from Smut to Lucifer. Edward, you don’t mean to say your Uncle Arnold didn’t do anything about it? When he found you weren’t dead?”

“He did not.”

“But couldn’t he be made to? Mr. Random would never have left you out of his will if he hadn’t thought you were dead.”

“And how does one prove what a dead man would or wouldn’t have done? We had had a colossal row, and he did change his will. Those are facts, and the law has a stupid affection for facts.”

“When did he change it-when you went away, or when he thought that you were dead?”

Just for a moment he looked at her with anger. Then he laughed and said,

“Never you mind, my child! And I’m not washing the family linen in public either. It may be dirty, and I think we’ll keep it at home.”

It was so much what he might have said to the schoolgirl of five years ago that it took her aback. She ought to have remembered to go on holding her tongue, but she hadn’t, and he had snubbed her. And instead of really minding, it felt quite natural. She coloured, but she laughed too, and said a little ruefully,